he was an internet prodigy and a fearless advocate for cyber freedoms today the friends and family of reddit co-founder aaron swartz laid him to rest r.t. was there and we'll bring you reports in just a minute. but forty years after america's most unpopular war what is what has the u.s. learned from the vietnam conflict and are those lessons being applied to military pursuits today we'll take a critical look at the policy and protests that defined a generation and compare it to two thousand and thirteen. and what can only be described as an editorial flub the gray lady reveals her true colors when it comes to the decades old says spirits over the west bank but

a simple headline says about the hidden bias in the new york times is office ahead . it's tuesday january fifteenth i am here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching r t. well today family and friends laid to rest a young man that helped make the internet what it is today aaron swartz is remembered for his dedication to a free and open internet but he was haunted by a federal case in which prosecutors called for extremely steep sentences and his death the new debate has emerged about government over government and prosecutorial overreach or do producer many rob lowe is in chicago today with a look at the ceremony. relatives friends activists and several alternative voices arrive together on a somber note at central avenue synagogue in chicago to pay their respects to an

internet pioneer aaron swartz who at the age of twenty six took his own life swartz was co-founder of the online publication reddit and demand progress and was an influential figure in his own right a passionate activist and a web freedom fighter he rallied for an open and accessible internet a point his supporters have vowed that they'll continue to champion one of the most important to also creating more democratization is making things more transparent and so if we can make information more transparent it's obviously a success for everyone out there erin was facing allegations and indictment on thirteen counts including wire fraud and computer fraud psychologist and supporter dr jean backman who came to highland park to pay respect to aaron's family suggest that the behavior of federal prosecutors was nothing short of bullying if you look at the definition of terrorism it is to inspire terror and this man a young man and his family were literally terrorized by the prosecutors and the

judicial discretion that let this case go forward and not stop despite the cold weather activists and supporters arrive by the dozens agreeing that aaron did pose a threat not to justice certainly not to national security but rather a threat to the status quo the idea that he was facing decades in jail is it's just disgusting absolutely appalling and and now we've lost a tremendously valuable and talented human being it's just it's so tragic rumors circulated of protests outside of the funeral the police on scene met only heavy hearted supporters here to bit a final goodbye and to remember erin for his work and activism. he was a genius you know you put in the steve jobs level you put him on the mark zuckerberg level you put him on a john lennon level you know he's a great kid with

a good heart trying to do something good for the world in chicago illinois but it up with our team. from our producer andrew blake joined us earlier from chicago and i first asked him about the mood there. quite somber but what if there's one big take away from from today's today's funeral was that aaron was not a somber person in fact he was a very very caring and one thing that we kept hearing time and time again during the funeral was that he was completely selfless he was someone who always looked out for others and that's why he was such an advocate for a free and open internet because he wanted to share information with others and you know today you know right here at the synagogue we saw hundreds of people packed it to recall someone and you know it was it was quite emotional there were there were tears at times but there was also a tremendous amount of laughter as people recall this is just a loving caring individual who who's seriously spent half of his life more than the

working to make sure that other people had access to information and to the internet who really revolutionized the community now and how do you think that his death will impact the issues that swartz stood for and like internet freedom. right now we can say that this is at least getting people talking and it's under terrible circumstances it really shouldn't take the death of a twenty six year old man to get people to analyze what is wrong with computer laws in this country the electronic communications privacy act is very very flawed if you ask many advocates of privacy and if you look at the computer fraud and abuse the very legislation that aaron himself was accused of violating you can ask people from any sort of sphere you know what do you think of it and you know sure there's going to be parts of it they're there for a reason but when when you have the massachusetts attorney general trying to prosecute someone like erin who was only trying to share information and to share

knowledge it's incredibly unfortunate and that was something that was really driven home today at the funeral and everyone who came up to offer eulogies said something something has to change the united states government can no longer be making martyrs out of happy because right now you know a friend of mine just recently said that at this point in time it seems like as far as the hacking community goes martyrs are the chief export of the united states government because there is no there is no celebrating them in the eye of washington there is still this this misconception character assassination that people who go on computers and do things that are understandable to others are doing it for harm and for no good and you like we saw here today hundreds of hundreds of people gathered to celebrate erin is someone who always put every single person else above above himself he was constant looking for ways to better the community to better society and to better the world and hopefully that change

is going to continue by finally revamping some legislation that exists right now that you know more than enough people will tell you are rather invalid and you know erin's father himself actually before the funeral finished this morning air. father said you know aaron didn't commit suicide but was killed by the government and he was very passionate about you know knowledge in that his son took his own life but but seeing that it. wasn't really aaron's depression in his opinion that did him in but it was more or less the persecution of prosecution of a government that just miss understands legislation and is only looking to make an example out of people. of course suicide suicide cases can be very complex and we heard it the way that aaron's family is reacting to this blaming the government for for what instigated him to take his own life alternately

aside from his family how are people over there viewing the prosecution's role in this. i'm sorry can you can you repeat the last question for me how are people there viewing the prosecution's role in the death aaron swartz. ok i'm sorry thank you you know it's not just this family who is saying that that that the department of justice in the massachusetts attorney general's office had a role in this kim brunner's leader who actually invented the world wide web as we know it he was here today and was championing for the community there and so much was a part of in love to to to make changes so that this doesn't happen any longer erin's partner tara. just after ten o'clock this morning and she was saying that in aaron's final days he seemed. almost like he couldn't fight anymore she said he just seemed tired and asked how long is this going to go on for it wasn't just his

family but it was people close to him his peers and his colleagues in the circle of information activists and online communities who were really feel at least for from the testimonies that i've heard from people that you know this wasn't just a list of selfish suicide but this was someone who simply couldn't take the weight of the federal government hurting them and you know i can't do your. understand what it would be like to be an heir and she was facing thirty five years in a federal penitentiary only for trying to help people but it's definitely something that it's not just this family recognizes and hopefully we will see change because of this but unfortunately it's under such terrible circumstances all right andy really appreciate you staying on top of this story over there in chicago that was our producer andrew blake. has been for decades today since richard nixon announced a cease fire with northern vietnam marking the beginning of the end of u.s.

involvement in a war that cost both sides dearly both financially and physically the price paid was too high for similar mistakes to be repeated but as our team arena par and i explains washington's foreign policy in recent years is making many wonder if history is repeating itself. sixty one year old ken dolls and is a husband father and retired firefighter four decades ago he was a member of the u.s. navy serving in vietnam every year we were there every day was like nine eleven for those people every day was nine eleven for to be the main the were killed an estimated three million vietnamese and more than fifty eight thousand americans the u.s. stepped in on the side of south vietnam in its fight against the communist back and forth which was seeking to unify the country on january fifteenth one nine hundred seventy three five nixon announced the end of offensive operations against north vietnam a military kristie that would lead to become

a foreign policy benchmarks for washington to never repeat the primary lesson that the us foreign policy establishment should have learned from vietnam and i don't think they'd learn from vietnam is that they cannot in spite of the fact that they have great military supremacy go in and just destroy a government occupy a country and remold their country so that it becomes a proxy or a client of the united states already here and the president's leader critics say washington has done a better job at repeating that rather than learning from we still keep getting these. awful wars or interventions and other countries. i mean it's well imperialism you're not going to win. we went to iraq we didn't win in the. race we can win even. and the same thing is like a vietnam we didn't win nothing one absolutely nothing and you know and they just

don't get it we've tried to rule the world we've tried to do it in not only in a way that's been damaging devery nation the world but in the process the united states has become less and less free it's become less and less economically viable and with each passing decade the war has generated more and more profit for the u.s. military industry i topic r.t. discussed it with filmmaker and vietnam war that oliver stone we have not done well with interventions anywhere but we continue to be an empire you know we have eight hundred plus bases here some of the very. we've created a huge infrastructure a global infrastructure where we're trying to be the world's policeman when it comes to america's security republican senator chuck hagel has been nominated to replace leon panetta eagle would be the first vietnam vet to ever head the u.s. department of defense when i was in vietnam in one nine hundred sixty eight united states senators making decisions that affected my life. and a lot of people who lost their lives that they didn't have i didn't having the say

about someone needs to represent that perspective and in our government as well the people in washington make the policy. but it's the little guys who come back in the body since two thousand and one an estimated sixty six hundred u.s. soldiers have returned from iraq or afghanistan in body bags and last year suicides by american soldiers surged to three hundred and forty nine historic high the u.s. military has had decades of experience in areas like asia latin america the middle east and africa however experts say if we were in washington don't begin learning from the past the only foreign policy factor that will continue changing is the geographic location of america's the policies and repeated mistakes reporting from new york arena portnoy r.t. . so is history repeating itself that's the question many on the side of the

antiwar argument make one discussing the united states' current involvement in the recent war such as iraq and now afghanistan to discuss willy hagar a vietnam veteran who is against the war joins us now well hello welcome thanks for joining us. so want to start off by first asking you what similarities you can draw between the two wars well the similarities are that it's a war of resentment that the united states is involved in it for reasons other than the stated objectives. that being the furthering of the economy and. our geopolitical stance in the mideast the similarities are. or that it's urgency with a. with indigenous people and not an army and that's causing us the problems that we're having on both sides. kind of going along with

that what parallels can you draw between the enemy that the us is fighting during the vietnam war it was in this rough terrain we had enemies that were kind of hiding among the populace how would you compare the two well the comparison geographically is that one was a jungle environment the other resistance pretty much rocks desert. the similarities are that that that the people that were writing aside from whatever their political aspirations are preventable people that were were foreigners and were in their provinces but just. foreign government might have troops in say new york city new york city people were banned together and and defend their country and then with occupation. that's a situation that's similar we had that same problem in vietnam we were we were fighting the local people with foreign ideas. secondary to that was that

the people are operating with lack of technology and operating on common ideals and our common ideals are truly independence and freedom from anybody being in their nation they proven that by driving out the russians once and it looks like we're about to have to give up again. their politics are probably very similar the politics are that they want to they want to they want self-determination without outside interference in their and their affairs. all right here we are today decades later. and it seems like there is quite a bit of agreement. and acknowledgment of the mistakes made during the vietnam war and you know that a lot of people say that the vietnam war itself was a mistake we see a lot of agreement on that but there isn't the same agreement when it comes to the war in afghanistan well there actually is the same agreement about the war in

afghanistan we learned our lessons of vietnam that you can't you can't militarily dominate a country and you can't militarily rebuild a nation that the people are not that supported those objectives that the rulers in vietnam and is the is islam most insurgents in afghanistan could not parade if the people didn't support them if they couldn't hide amongst the people. there would be there was there would be no support for that but then with that didn't happen so they're on a common ideal their common goal and i expressed before and so whatever we state whatever our stated purposes are they're not in group with what are actually for and the results that we're getting right i don't want to bring up a major difference between the two wars. during the vietnam war there was a draft of course today there isn't there isn't

a draft so do you think that that that's a big factor in why there isn't as much anti-war protests oh absolutely if there was a draft. the students would be out in the streets by the thousands didn't. because now we could actually happen to them with an all voluntary force it doesn't really touch many people were in it and in numbers and what the overall numbers are the percentage is a very small of those who serve and who are affected by the thing. the problem is they're being affected in the same ways vietnam veterans were. already approved with one of the approved which is that they actually defect and are beginning to get or right as surely if there is an imminent possibility of you actually going to war yourself that might make you think twice. another big difference is the human cost that we saw between the two wars of course now we have drone warfare there

were a lot more deaths during the vietnam war so do you think when it comes to outcry over afghanistan it's more about the financial cost of the war as opposed to the human cost of the war. i don't think we pay enough attention to the human cost of war if we did we might be a little less interested in getting into another war not that we're talking about iran. but the but because people don't see the human cost because it only affects just a small part of the really the population that's why it's important for folks like myself and your media to get the word out about those human cost it turns across the treasury of the united states in an economic crisis right now and and if you think about transplanting that money that we're spending on these foreign ventured such as this one that is extended for all these years without any progress how much good that of affected some of the issues that are that are that are costing our citizens. economically and and and costing our schools budgets in fostering our

our services but on the things that are to serve the people are not available because we're pouring money into this war and they try to tell you that it's about something else that the money is going somewhere else it's not going to the war right and so that's that's the cost of the war. that everybody's thinking of that all right and of course now we have this drawdown that's in the works. do you think when it when americans reflect on the war in afghanistan that it will be kind of regarded in the same way the mistakes will be analyzed in the same way. that we do today with the vietnam. well that's a that's kind of a difficult question i believe that some people will i say i believe that some people do now and but but i do i think it will be viewed differently because i

think that from the beginning because of our outspoken this when we were rejected by the. by the nation we came home from vietnam because of outspokenness there are a lot of things available to reintegrate veterans into society admittedly not enough and we're not going to stop fighting but there are things there are support groups and things that such as we never had and and i think that the nation has caught on to that when you see things like wounded warrior project and all of the algorithm from just one i think there is a war and the and the attention that the media does pay to it i think there is a lot of a common attention throughout the population of the country that supportive of the troops. and their service but are not supportive of the mission all right well we really appreciate you coming on and weighing in that was really hager a vietnam veteran who is against the war vietnam veterans against world schools efforts. we turn now to

a new york times article raising eyebrows because of its title take a look here is a screenshot of when the article article originally appeared on the website on january eleventh that reads palestinians set up camps in israeli occupied west bank but later that evening that title changed the new one breeds palestinians set up tents where israel plans homes this was all captured by a website called news distant org we reached out to the new york times asking why the change of title but we haven't gotten a response yet the story is about how about two hundred palestinians are setting up tents in israeli occupied west bank territory called you one the group has announced a plan on establishing a village there called bob all shams for more i'm joined now by normal norman finkelstein finkelstein excuse me he's an activist and author of knowing too much

why the american jewish romance with israel is coming to an end norman great to have you won for you for having me so first want to address this article is it simply a mistake or do you think that it's something more than that. well in a sense it's a mistake because the people who are in charge some of them are not sufficiently indoctrinated and so they simply report the facts and then somebody from the israeli counselor or somebody from the jewish lobby immediately gets on the phone with the new york times and tells them hey you're not supposed to say things like that and the new york times obediently then changes the headline actually since the dawn of the internet the web you can see this quite frequently happening and it's actually kind of amusing so during the latest israeli rampage. in the

two thousand and twelve around the second or the third day the where there was a headline it's. israel targets civilian buildings and the story was about israel leveling the hamas government buildings and actually i was quite surprised the new york times acknowledging that israel is targeting civilian infrastructure which of course is a war crime but within two or three hours the headline changes to israel targets hamas government buildings so. it's an editor here or there who is insufficiently induction they did and so he or she simply posts on the web the actual facts as against the party line now of course with the technology these days this can all be captured and documented ted we

should mention i do want to mention because i want to be fair in the body of that article they use the term that they were moved later on in that title they didn't use that term israeli occupied in the body of the article also just that negate the . accusations of this bias what do you think no because the assume or. rightfully that many people just read the headlines and only selectively read the actual story so they were concerned people would be immediately riveted by the headline and the headline was quite revealing occupied territory at least it's news for the new york times i should point out in the real world there is no dispute whatsoever on these questions so in july two thousand and four the international court of justice it rendered an advisory opinion matters pertaining to the israeli occupied territories

and it said i'm the. only that the whole of the west bank the whole of gaza and the whole of east jerusalem are occupied palestinian territories there isn't even a controversy in the real world on that question and if you look at the new york times byline they typically referred to jerusalem they don't say is really occupied east jerusalem they give it this nondescript title jerusalem well it's not just jerusalem according to the international court of justice east jerusalem is occupied palestinian territory like the rest of the west bank and gaza and the gaza strip but in the new york times these elementary facts can be acknowledged so are you implying that media outlets new york times as an example that they're kind of weary of using these terms because it gives israel

negative connotation. well there's clearly an israel lobby at work on these particular issues the lobby is very effective as they boast that they're very effective and the new york times at this particular moment the new york times is base of support is basically the upper east side of new york city that's its main readership its main constituency and so it's eager to please the very wealthy jewish constituency in the upper east side it's very easy to tell in the new york times and these story that the story having to do with jews say there is a story about the production of blintzes in brazil you will always see listed as one of the top ten stories of the day and anything having to do with jews is a media really top ten most read most read article list that's their base of

support and so the new york times is obviously at the end of the day it's a money making enterprise and that wants to please its base constituency and so we tell you the news and it cuts cuts up the news in such ways as to please their constituency and you're not allowed to say basic facts like the west bank east jerusalem these are occupied palestinian territories right very interesting and really appreciate you coming on the show and weighing in that was normal norman finkelstein activist and author of knowing too much why the american jewish romance went as real as coming to an end. well breaking the sat is coming up in thirty minutes here on r t let's check in with abby martin to see what's on tap for today hi abby. so today of course it's

a very somber note with the death of their words we're going to be talking about his legacy his accomplishments. and his funeral what people are saying you know his father of course the system is what drove him to kill himself of course strong words coming from someone in his family but it really shed some light on the two tiered justice system in which aaron was the odds were heavily stacked against him he was on the wrong side of the justice system and we're going to speak to a break in a separate user manual rob lowe's on the ground in chicago to kind of give us some insight on the tone and how he's going to move forward from this we're all going to talking to james corbett of the corvette report about a ton of issues really mainly about alternative media and military suicides that and more coming up next on breaking the set right looking forward to it thanks that is going to do it for now for the news but for more on the stories become vered you can check out our you tube channel that youtube dot com slash our team erica and you can check out our web site.